Over my time at Sutton High School, it has always been a slow process getting lunch and needs to be improved in some way. Lunch line takes too long to get food, especially the panini line, and leaves many people who are not particularly fast having to eat in hallways and classrooms. Many students feel lunch is, also, too repetitive with there rarely being any new options for food.
Many schools around the country have this problem with their long lines, and while many would say just to add more equipment at spots that need it, it isn’t that simple. At Sutton our school, specifically the panini press area, doesn’t have enough electrical power to support more equipment with it only being able to fully operate two machines at a time. With the time it takes to fully cook a panini, it can leave many people without any time to eat or even get their food at all with lines out the door.
The school is on a very strict budget with what they can spend money on. If they want to improve the equipment they would need to be able to get a grant from the state or find money within the budget to upgrade, and if they can get this they have to prove that it is worth it to upgrade.
Mrs. Poquette, who is the director of food services at Sutton, is trying to implement a new panini pre-order system. The school is attempting to purchase an app, and through the app students will be able to place an order to the people running the panini press. The order will print out like a restaurant and have a paper saying who’s is who’s.
Students who don’t want to wait in the panini line are able to get normal lunch which still takes over half the lunch period to get food if you’re in the back of the line. The school is trying to implement new ways to speed up the lunch process, and after speaking with Mrs. Poquette, I learned that they are very limited in what they can do to improve the setup of the lunch line and the kitchen without knocking down walls to be able to rewire everything and move it.
To speed up the process, Mrs. Poquette discussed having more grab and go options, trying to always have a cheese burger or chicken fingers and fries available everyday that students can grab and go to speed up the time it takes for the lines.
Implementing new food options to the menu is another big challenge the school faces with state guidelines being very strict on needing to include a fruit, vegetable, meat/alternate meat grains and milk.
The school staff is one of the hardest working staff, here everyday for 5+ hours a day preparing the lunch. It can be hard on them to make different things that will take longer to prepare and make them have to show up too early. They are great, but they also have restrictions and limitations that make their job and getting our lunch difficult.
Solutions? They may be out there, but at this time is hard to see them or anticipate them getting here soon.
